The things you see on the Internet! The latest item to go viral — well, not exactly viral yet, just bacterial so far — is a denunciation of Canada’s financial system by 12-year-old Victoria Grant of Cambridge, Ont. “12-year-old financial pundit becomes YouTube sensation,” says CTV’s website. “Victoria Grant, 12, hits lecture circuit to explain how Canadian banking is a fraud,” writes The Huffington Post. “Twelve-year-old delivers scathing critique of Canadian banks,” The Globe and Mail intones. Because most people think Canadian banks have done pretty well lately, at least compared to all the other banks in the world, you’re bound to wonder what Victoria’s secret is.

If you Google “Victoria Grant,” you get 68 million hits and are taken directly to young Ms. Grant’s recent speech to something called the Public Banking Institute. (“Victoria Grant Canadian banking” only gets 6.2 million hits, so fame is relative — there must be other Victoria Grants out there.) The Public Banking Institute is a U.S. organization set up in January 2011 to encourage exactly that: government-owned banks, preferably at least one per state, with a mandate to lend money to businesses and, presumably, not hedge anything. It’s a message that, like any anti-bank message these days, will have powerful populist appeal — a “populist” being best defined as someone who doesn’t have a clue but is mad as hell anyway. Read more

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